Accusations of personal obsessional behaviour seem reasonable and not unexpected.
Family and friends, well, some friends at least, are wary of crossing certain boundaries, of opening the door, setting free those mania’s, unleashing those obsessions, igniting the fire.
And after three days at the annual National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) and having just finished reading “The Violence of Climate Change: Lessons of Resistance from Nonviolent Activists” the fire is ablaze and even more intense.
The news, in a general sense is not good with humanity walking blindly into a calamity about which it seems broadly unaware and while those challenges were spelt out at the NCCARF event, many speakers, including one from the Shepparton-based Goulburn Broken Greenhouse Alliance (GBGHA), told of innovative efforts and positive responses from all parts of Australia.
Yes, the news for many was disempowering, but equally others found discussions, often simply through chance encounters with other attendees, inspiring and within that sufficiently encouraging to press on with climate change responses in their towns or districts.
NCCARF director Professor Jean Palutikof, from Griffith University on the Gold Coast, closed the conference saying that just a few weeks before the event she had felt quite depressed about the level of climate change adaption in Australia, but having seen and heard most of what the disparate group of presenters had to say, and what they had achieved in their respective communities, she felt refreshed and uplifted.
Tatura’s Marisa O’Halloran, one of the speakers, told of innovative work by the greenhouse alliance, fulfilling in many ways what author Kevin J. O’brien had written about in “The Violence of Climate Change”.
O’Brien wrote: “Responses to climate change should be courageous, because it is tempting to be overwhelmed and paralyzed by fear in the face of a problem so large and so complicated. Responses to climate change should be structural, because destructive institutions and systems have developed and solidified over time. Finally, responses to climate change should be creative, because the adaptive complexity of this violence exceeds conventional wisdom.”
Everything Marisa, and others discussed epitomised the responses O’Brien argued were necessary, critical, and courageous.
O’Brien argued that every person of privilege (that’s us) should learn about the effects of climate change on our own neighbourhoods and with that in mind, questions have been put to a few locals, with the answers ranging across the spectrum of doubt, uncertainty, unanswerable questions and, beyond that, simply not knowing what to do.
A Dookie fellow is finding measurable climatic differences to his farming; a Mooroopna friend is noticing hitherto unseen downpours in unlikely places and bushfires in equally strange areas.
Climate change cannot be stopped, mitigation is still important, but mostly we should focus on adapting to a future in which thriving as it was understood in the mid to latter decades of the 20th is no longer possible.
Obsession has produced an inequitable and out of control economy; obsession has unleashed the fetish of consumerism; obsession has taken us down the dark path of energy-rich lifestyles; and, if we are to turn this ship around to take us to a way of life that is caring, friendly, sustainable and free of the present prevailing violence, we need to embrace hitherto unseen obsession.
